


hunger

by divorceadvocate



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, Fainting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Other, PLEASE DONT FUCKING READ THIS IF ITS GONNA TRIGGER YOU, Past Child Abuse, THIS ONE IS ROUGH, and id really hate to accidentally trigger anyone, i literally cannot stress enough how much this is just entirely abt eating disorders, i project onto nureyev: the movie, it deals really heavily with eating disorders, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24481603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divorceadvocate/pseuds/divorceadvocate
Summary: Juno was always so warm, and to Nureyev, whose hands were nearly always cold to the touch, this was a blessing. He cherished having his body against his each night to keep him from freezing in the already chilly Carte Blanche. Juno seemed to sense this, and ran his hands up and down Nureyev’s body when they laid together, almost absent-mindedly, chasing away the goosebumps and the shivers.His hands found Nureyev’s chest, skimming gently over the surgery scars there and the raised ridges of his ribs. Passing over the bone that jutted out from his hips, running up the line of his spine that poked out from his skin, and drifted across his prominent collarbones.Juno frowned. “Honey, you’re so skinny,” he said in a hushed murmur.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 50
Kudos: 263





	hunger

**Author's Note:**

> HEY YOU. YEAH, YOU. DONT FUCKING READ THIS IF ITS GONNA TRIGGER YOU. it deals a lot with eating disorders, anorexia in particular. i wrote this bc i decided to project onto nureyev as a vent. i will not be offended if you click out of this right now. please be safe

Sneaking into places he was not meant to be was one of Peter Nureyev’s many talents. It was one he needed to survive, so of course he had to be good at it. He had been picking locks and guessing security pins correctly since before he could remember, and disappearing into the background when he needed to was a knee jerk reaction at this point. Which was very useful in this particular situation, he mused, as he slipped silently into the sickbay of the Carte Blanche. 

Buddy had made it very clear to everyone on board that no one besides Vespa could handle the medicine inside unless it was an emergency. She didn't need to say why; Jet's clenched jaw and Juno's averted gaze made it easy to guess. 

But his goal tonight wasn't a cheap high, or an overdose. His goal was the flat, unassuming piece of metal on the floor, tucked into the corner of the sickbay like an afterthought. 

After prodding it with his foot, the metal square on the floor came to life, lighting up blue and showing an outline of two feet, revealing itself to be exactly what he had suspected it was when he was in here last; a scale. He stripped down to nothing, delicately folding his clothes and placing them on a table next to him as he did. He closed his eyes, said a silent prayer, and stepped on the scale. 

This was a ritual Nureyev held every so often. Just to check himself. To make sure he was on track. There was no shame in whatever the number was, he tried to tell himself. There's no shame in being here, he tried to convince himself, filing away the fact that he had snuck in at 4 in the morning to ensure he wouldn't be caught. To make sure no one would see what the number was in case it was bad. 

He opened his eyes. 

153 pounds. 

Nureyev felt frozen in place, staring at that number. 153. His stomach dropped and he forgot how to breathe, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. He felt angry, embarrassed, ugly. Against all of his best efforts, ashamed. 

He stepped off of the scale and the blue lights instantly switched off, leaving him alone in darkness, but that number was still there behind his eyelids every time he blinked. He tried to grab his glasses to slip them on, but he was trembling too hard to pick them up and dropped them on the floor. 

Nureyev tried to shake it off, snatching them up again and shoving them haphazardly onto his face. As he got dressed, he tried to push the number out of his mind. 153. 

He slipped out of the sickbay, perhaps less silently than when he had slipped in. When he'd weighed himself a few months back, before Buddy Aurinko had approached him for this job, he'd been 145 pounds. The feeling that number had given him wasn’t happiness exactly, but it was very close to it. 

As he crept between the bedsheets and back beside a fast asleep Juno, he tried not to think about how  _ big _ 153 pounds was. 

Nureyev took his glasses off and set them on the bedside table, rubbing at his eyes. He had forced himself to stay up this late so that he could sneak out when Juno was sleeping, and the exhaustion was quickly catching up with him. He laid back down, pulling the comforter over himself. The motion made a rustling noise, and Nureyev heard a whine from next to him.

"Mmn... N'rey...?" Juno's eye opened blearily to look at him, and Nureyev smiled despite the storm raging in his mind.

"Go back to sleep, love," he whispered, and Juno just hummed in agreement, too out of it to argue, and wrapped an arm around Nureyev's torso, scooting closer to press his face into his chest. Juno was gone again in just a few moments. His eyelashes cast long shadows across his cheeks, and his curls framed the sharp angle of his jaw like a painting in a museum. And Nureyev couldn’t help but think that Juno Steel deserved someone far more beautiful than he ever could be. 

\---

"Rita, why did you think this was an okay amount of chili powder? I can feel my sinuses begging for mercy," Juno said the next evening, grimacing around another spoonful of whatever the hell they were all having for dinner. Nureyev would call it meatloaf, but that seemed a generous term. He cut out a square of it and then smashed it with the flat of his knife. 

"Aw, stop being such a big baby, Mistah Steel," Rita said around a mouthful of her too-spicy concoction. 

"Yes, I'd have to agree with Rita and recommend that you also take that course of action," Buddy said smoothly. Juno spluttered out a response about how  _ I'm not a baby, stop laughing at me, _ while Nureyev meticulously cut out more bite sized pieces from his serving, smashing them, rearranging them. 

Eight pounds. That's how much he'd gained, how much he needed to lose. Normally, it'd be an easy feat. He could just skip meals for a few days between heists and be fine. But here, on the Carte Blanche? With five people constantly around, one of them a captain hell bent on making this crew a perfect family complete with a dog and a white picket fence, and one of them a literal detective? It was impossible to just  _ not  _ eat and expect no one to notice, especially when meals were forced upon you. So he had to get creative. But improvisation was one of his many skills.

"Well, I think it's delicious, Miss Rita," Nureyev said, and smiled at the way Rita giggled and bounced in her seat. 

"Ooh, you really think so, Mistah Ransom?!" 

"Indeed, but I-" he frowned, placing his fork down on his plate. It looked half eaten, exactly like he'd intended. "I'm afraid I can't eat another bite. I fill up so easily nowadays, I'll have to-" 

Rita looked like she was about to combust. "Oh, oh, could I  _ please _ have the rest of yours, Mistah Ransom? I didn't make enough, and I'm STARVING, you know, hacking that database earlier really ramped up my appetite and I ran out of my chips the other day, and-" 

Nureyev had already set the plate in front of her mid sentence. He willed his smile to not turn into a satisfied smirk. "Of course," he said, standing up from the table. "Thank you for the wonderful meal," he added for good measure, taking great care not to look at anyone else at the table as he left. 

\---

"Ohmygod,  _ oh my god, fuck! _ " Juno's body was wound up so tight Nureyev thought he might snap in half. His breath came in short, quick pants, his hands twisted into the sheets he laid on. " _ Fuck _ ," he said again, this time in more of a sob, screwing his eyes shut and biting his bottom lip in a feeble attempt to be quiet. It didn't really work, but Nureyev certainly wasn't complaining. 

"You're being such a good girl for me, love," he murmured, kissing Juno's neck and relishing in the whimper that escaped him. "You make such pretty sounds for me. You're so beautiful, Juno, my Juno." Juno sobbed once more, his back arching off of the mattress as he came apart under Nureyev's touch. Nureyev drank it all in, every quiver of his body, every ragged gasp, the way he tried to squeeze his legs shut while Nureyev held them open. 

When Juno relaxed into the sheets, Nureyev took that as his cue to gently pull away from him and lay down next to him. Juno immediately curls into him, a dazed smile across his face. 

"Your dirty talk is still too sappy," he teased, reaching a hand up to brush away a stray strand of hair on Nureyev's cheek. But his hand doesn't move from there, his thumb gently stroking across his cheekbone. 

Nureyev grinned, moving his head to press his lips against the palm of Juno's hand. "It's not sappy, it's _ true _ . You  _ are  _ beautiful, you're so gorgeous, I-”

Juno cut Nureyev off with an eye-roll and a kiss that’s frankly  _ filthy _ before swinging a leg over Nureyev’s torso to straddle him. “Too sappy,” he accused again, before snaking a hand around Nureyev’s throat, squeezing gently. The motion made him gasp, and the smirk that spread across Juno’s face was devilish. “I can think of better things to do with that mouth.”

Afterwards, when they’re both out of breath and sweaty, but still clung to each other like they’re life rings in the middle of a vast ocean, Peter ran his hands up and down Juno’s thighs. They were covered in stretch marks, thick and strong, like the rest of Juno. There was a layer of fat over the muscle that lay underneath, and it was the sexiest thing in the world to him. He frowned against Juno’s neck. He could appreciate and love Juno’s body when it looked like this, he thought it was a work of art, but the thought of having a similar body himself made him want to claw all of his skin off. How was it that he hated himself for being eight pounds over his goal weight, but he would worship his round, soft body all night if he could? How come he couldn’t love his body the way he loved Juno’s?

“You okay down there, Nureyev?” Juno mumbled, running a hand through his hair with a touch that grounded him enough that he could reply with, “I’m fine, dear.”

\---

“Okay, so the next camera is...”

“Right down this hallway here,” Nureyev said, pointing to a spot on the projected blueprint in front of them. Rita nodded, tapping a few keys on her keyboard and then the view from the security camera was on her screen. With a few more taps, the screen went black and an error message was displayed. Rita smiled. 

“And then right here-”

“Already on it, Mistah Ransom.”

Rita and Nureyev had never really gotten the opportunity to work together, and Nureyev found he was rather enjoying the experience. He understood why Juno kept her so close; she was not only very useful and good at what she did, but she was fun to be around. Never a boring moment with her, even though they’d been doing the same thing for nearly two hours now on repeat.

The place they were planning on infiltrating later that night had lax physical security, but the surveillance was intense. The building was bared to the teeth with cameras that could pick out a face from a mile away and pull up their darkest secrets and track them down in an instant. But, unfortunately, most of these cameras were in hidden places not shown on the blueprint that they had on hand. 

So they had sent Nureyev earlier that day to pose as an inspector and scope out the places for those hidden cameras and mark them down for Rita to take down later. He’d dismissed the plan as risky and oversimplified when Buddy had proposed it during the family meeting, but now that they were doing it? He had to give Captain Aurinko some credit; she knew what she was doing. 

“Okay! That one is down, only... 37 more to go!” Rita said with a bright smile. “I think we’ll need more snacks for that many cameras, do you mind-”

“Not at all, Miss Rita. More chocolate shrimp blasters?”

She hummed in thought, typing a rather long line of code. “I think I’m actually in the mood for some cheesy cactus num-nums! 

Nureyev tried not to gag at the sound of whatever  _ that _ was, instead smiling and saying, “Of course, I’ll go fetch those right away.”

He stood and barely took two steps before his entire world swayed and dipped around him. His vision swam and blurred around the edges, and his ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton. He stuck a hand out to steady himself on his chair so that he could gather himself, pretend like nothing was wrong. This happened after a few days of fasting, he’d learned over the years. All it meant that he was on the right path, that his self-control was steadfast and strong and  _ working. _

But when he reached out, his hand found nothing and his knees buckled beneath him. He went crashing to the ground, and heard Rita shout something that might have been a name. Whatever name he was going by these days. He found it hard to remember with his face pressed into the cold metal of the floor.

He laid there for a few moments, taking in slow, even breaths, his eyes open and staring straight ahead but seeing nothing but vague colors and shapes. After a few moments, the blurriness cleared, and he could see the details of Rita’s shoes, the little flower that was carved into the snap on her Mary-Janes. His strength came back to him slowly, inch by inch, until he had the energy to push himself up onto his elbows.

Now that he could hear properly again, he could actually make out Rita’s panicked babble. Well, bits and pieces of it. He only really caught the tail end of it, her saying, “-talk to me, Mistah Ransom? Just to let me know you aren’t dying? Oh, god, do you have some rare disease we don’t know about?! Ooh, or maybe your blood sugar is low! I’m not a doctor, though Miss Vespa is! I’ll go get her, maybe Captain A, or Mistah Steel, too? I know he’d be worried about ya too! And, well, I wouldn’t want Mistah Jet to feel left out, we’ll grab him, too-”

“No!” Nureyev said, startling even himself with how loud he was. “No,” he said again, softer. “I’m fine, Rita, thank you, I simply... slipped on the floor. I didn’t hit anything vital, and it’s not worth getting everyone worked up over.” Poor Rita looked like she was about to cry. “I’m okay, really. Now, let’s get you those bom-boms.”

“Num-nums,” she corrected him tearfully. 

\---

Juno was always so warm, and to Nureyev, whose hands were nearly always cold to the touch, this was a blessing. He cherished having his body against his each night to keep him from freezing in the already chilly Carte Blanche. Juno seemed to sense this, and ran his hands up and down Nureyev’s body when they laid together, almost absent-mindedly, chasing away the goosebumps and the shivers. 

His hands found Nureyev’s chest, skimming gently over the surgery scars there and the raised ridges of his ribs. Passing over the bone that jutted out from his hips, running up the line of his spine that poked out from his skin, and drifted across his prominent collarbones. 

Juno frowned. “Honey, you’re so skinny,” he said in a hushed murmur. 

“Thank you,” he said without thinking, and instantly kicked himself for it when Juno’s frown deepened and he sat up on one elbow to look at Nureyev properly. 

“Thank you?” he echoed. “Babe, it’s not a compliment, I’m  _ worried _ about you.” He huffed, looking up at the ceiling as if debating his next words in his head. But Nureyev already knew what he was going to say. “I noticed you haven’t been eating much, and you just-”

“I’ve been eating plenty, Juno-”

“I used to be a goddamn detective, don’t lie to me, Nureyev,” he snapped.

Nureyev reached up to Juno, tried to bring him back down next to him, distract him,  _ something _ to get him off track. “I have a high metabolism, darling, it’s nothing to worry about.”

Juno swatted the hand away, now properly sitting up instead of leaning over Nureyev. “This isn’t  _ healthy _ .”

“Ah, yes,  _ Juno Steel, _ the lady from Mars so  _ renowned _ for taking care of himself, the  _ poster child  _ of health and self care,” Nureyev hissed, and regretted the words the moment they slipped past his lips. Juno didn’t seem offended, however, simply narrowing his eyes. 

“So you admit that you aren’t taking care of yourself?”   
  
“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Nureyev ran his hands down his face, taking a steadying breath to compose himself.

“Can we not talk about this right now?” he whispered. His voice came out weak and tired, and it seemed to snuff out the fire in Juno. Or at least let it simmer down enough for his shoulders to sag and for a sigh to escape him. 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he said, laying back down beside Nureyev. 

Nureyev felt sick. The cocktail of emotions he felt, shame, guilt, disgust, anger, left a bitter taste in his mouth. He tried desperately to file them all away, to ignore it, to make it go away. He wanted nothing more than to crawl out of his skin and leave this awful, ugly husk of a body behind. He felt dirty.

Those warm hands touched Nureyev’s shoulder, trying to pull him back against Juno’s body, and Nureyev flinched so hard it jostled the bed frame. Juno’s hand pulled back immediately. 

“I’m sorry-”

“It’s fine-”

The two of them fell into silence, Juno staring holes into Nureyev and Nureyev staring at the ceiling until Juno turned away from him and let his breathing go slow and even.

Nureyev stared at that ceiling for a long time, wishing he could just turn to Juno, apologize, and ask him, no,  _ beg _ him to hold him until he fell asleep. Wishing he could swallow his pride and ask Juno to help him because, as much as he tries to tell himself that he’s okay, he hates living like this. Hungry, weak. But as much as he hates it, he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. So, instead he lays there and wills himself not to think about how he feels too big. It doesn’t work. 

\---

The ordeal with Nureyev posing as an inspector and Rita taking down the cameras from the other day had proven beneficial. It was ridiculously easy for them to sneak into the building. They weren’t exactly inconspicuous; the chosen team was Nureyev and Jet, who was likely the biggest man Nureyev had ever seen in his life. Jet had chosen to kick in the glass window instead of waiting for Nureyev to pick the lock on it, and their footsteps echoed loudly across the floor as they walked to the room that had the artifact they were looking for inside of it. But there were no alarms, all of the cameras they passed were turned off (thanks to Rita), and the one security guard outside didn’t seem too concerned with actually doing his job; he’d already been asleep at his post when they arrived. 

This was going to be a hitch. 

“Do you want to kick down this door, too, or will you let me pick the lock?” Nureyev asked Jet once they were standing in front of the room. Jet examined the door, running a finger down the frame of it. 

“It seems as though I would do little damage to the door if I tried to kick it in. It would be the smartest course of action to let you do this.” Jet stepped back to give Nureyev room to work. 

Nureyev genuinely didn’t know if Jet just understood sarcasm or not, but decided either way that commenting on it would be in poor taste, instead kneeling in front of the lock. It took him barely a minute; a fingerprint followed by a three digit pin. What was this, amateur hour? The door swung open before them, and now all that was left to do was actually find the artifact. If their intel was correct, then it would be tucked away in a crate somewhere in this room. 

Holy shit, that was a lot of crates. 

“I’ll start looking in the crates at the left side of the room, you start on the right side,” Jet ordered, not waiting for confirmation from Nureyev before going over to the left side, and immediately prying open the first crate there. 

Nureyev didn’t really like being told what to do, but he did it anyway, using his knife to pop open the lid of the first crate. A pile of old books by some author with the last name Richardson that were starting to mold. The second crate was filled with fur coats. The third a collection of intricately carved lighters. The fourth an old fossil of an ancient saint bernard. 

They spent way longer in that room than Nureyev would’ve liked to have. He kept desperately wishing that the person who was keeping this damn artifact would have had the decency to at least label their damn crates, because he had been on his feet for far too long and his knees were starting to complain. 

He was rummaging through a crate of medals from the war, when he felt it. His head started swimming, his vision went blurry on the edges, and his hearing slipped away from him little by little until Jet’s rummaging was gone, replaced with an insistent buzz. 

Nureyev let out a resigned sigh, and gripped the edges of the crate as he took deep breaths in, deep breaths out. This had happened just the other day with Rita, and he was fine. He was okay. He just needed to breathe and not move for a few moments, let his body recover, and it would be fine

But it wasn’t fine. His vision got more and more blurry, to the point where his eyes were wide open and all he could see was black. Deep breaths. His knees buckled under him, and he tried desperately to keep his hold onto the crate to hoist himself back up before Jet noticed, but his limbs felt like they were made of static and lead. The last thing he remembered was the feeling of his skull cracking against the concrete floor. 

\---

“-needs to rest, you can’t be in here disturbing him-”

“I just want to make sure he’s okay-”

“For the millionth time, Steel, he’ll be fine, I just need to run some tests to make sure he isn’t concussed, now can you stop acting like a mother hen and get out of my-”

Nureyev opened his eyes. The scene in front of him was blurry, and he could only make out general shapes, colors. White, green, a deep brown. 

“Let me through, dammit, I just want to see him-”

“...Juno?” The word came out slurred and sleepy. After blinking a few times, everything started to come back into focus. Sure enough, there was Juno, standing behind a ragged looking Vespa who was trying her damn best to keep him out of the sickbay. His heart did a funny little flip in his chest at the sight of him. They hadn’t exchanged more than awkward pleasantries since their argument the other night. “What happened?” he asked, looking back and forth between the two. 

“You were in the building with Jet and you fell, hit your head. Jet had to carry you out of there and back here. You’ve been out for about three hours,” Vespa explained, ignoring Juno who was still trying to get past her.

“Ransom! Hey, let me talk to him, he’s awake, I-”

Vespa turned her back to Nureyev so she could face Juno, and he could see her shake her head. “Come back later, Steel, I’m  _ working _ .” He can practically hear her teeth grinding together. But Juno, bless his stubborn and steadfast heart, stood his ground, arms crossed and his brow furrowed as he fixed Vespa with a trademark Steel glare.

Vespa looked back at Nureyev and he saw her face properly for the first time. She didn’t look angry like he expected, or even annoyed. Just tired. Okay, maybe there was some annoyance in that expression, but it was definitely the secondary emotion being displayed. 

She turned back to Juno and leaned in closer to him, and whispered a word that Nureyev thinks might have been, “Please.”

Juno’s eye widened for a moment, and he glanced between the two of them, his face slowly creasing with confusion and worry. But after a few moments, he nodded, slowly, and said, “I’ll be outside.” And then he left.

Vespa turned to Nureyev, letting out a deep sigh. “You don’t have a concussion.”

He frowned. “But you didn’t test me for-”   
  
She gestured to a tool on the table next to her, a thick metal ring about a foot wide, inlaid with lights and a tiny screen. “I already did. The brain scanner we have is small, but it does the job. You hit your head pretty hard, but you’ll live.”

Nureyev nodded slowly, looking back at the door where Juno had just left through. “Okay, good to know. Why did Juno have to leave, then, why can’t he-”

“When was the last time you ate?”

Oh. That was why. His blood runs cold at the question, and he’s frozen. Not for long, just for a second, but it’s enough for Vespa to see through his bullshit. He tried to give her his best impression of bewilderment anyway. 

“I ate right before we left tonight, at dinner. You were  _ there, _ Vespa-”

“Don’t bullshit me, Ransom. You didn’t eat, you pushed your food around for 15 minutes and then put it in the fridge. You didn’t take a single bite.”

“Vespa-”

“And don’t try to tell me you did, because I tested your blood while you were out and your iron levels are basically nonexistent. So, I’m gonna ask you again; when did you last eat.”

Nureyev looked down at his hands where they lay clenched in his lap. He knew exactly when, but his throat felt dry and like it was about to close up. 

“Four days ago. At lunch,” he whispered, refusing to look at Vespa.

“Hell, Ransom,” she mumbled. “Listen, I’m not going to beat around the bush. I know what anorexia looks like, and you fit the bill down to the letter. And I think I know better than anyone on this damn ship that your disorders, your sicknesses? Those aren’t your fault. But if you know you’re struggling, you tell us. There’s ways we can help you, pills you can take that supply the necessary vitamins and proteins you need while you recover.”   
  
Nureyev knew she was trying to help. He knew she was the ship's doctor, and that she was trying to do her job. But that didn’t stop the flash of anger that went through him. 

“I’m not  _ sick, _ Vespa, I just don’t need to eat as much as the rest of you-” 

“You  _ are _ , though, that’s the thing, Ransom. You need to acknowledge that and take care of yourself, or you put the entire crew at risk. You’re lucky that this job wasn’t higher stakes, otherwise you and Siquliak would be  _ dead _ .” Nureyev sat there, silently, and tried to decide his play here. He couldn’t risk getting kicked off of the crew for something as trivial as this. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, low and even. 

Vespa glared at him. Which was to be expected. “Fine. Prove it.” She produced a slice of bread from seemingly nowhere, holding it out to him. “Eat this. The whole thing.”

Nureyev raised an eyebrow and shrank back in his seat. “Vespa, I’m not-”

“If you eat this, we won’t talk about it again. I’ll give you some iron pills and chalk it up to stress and Buddy is none the wiser.”

Nureyev stared at the slice of bread. He knew exactly which one it was, it was from the loaf that Jet had baked earlier in the week. It had smelled so good that Nureyev had to go to his room and smother himself in perfumes to block out the scent, to block out temptation. It was homemade, so there were no written nutrition facts that he normally relied on, but if he had to guess, the bread could be anywhere from 90 to 100 calories a slice. And he couldn’t risk that. He was _ better _ than that. So he just stared at the bread. His sense of pride and the disappointment he felt in himself for not just sucking it up and eating the slice warred violently with each other in his mind.

“Ransom, you literally fainted today, will you fucking eat something?!”

Nureyev opened his mouth to argue, but found that it was suddenly very hard to speak. So he closed his mouth and looked away from her, from her judging eyes.

“You know I have to tell Buddy, right?”

Nureyev wanted nothing more than to melt into the ground. 

\---

“What the hell are you doing, Pete?”

Peter freezes where he stands, caught red-handed. Literally. The red sauce from the dumpling he was in the middle of taking another bite out of was dripping onto his palm and down his forearm, and Mag is staring at him with an expression that told Peter he would want nothing more than to slap the said dumpling right out of his hand. 

Peter swallows the bite he has in his mouth and wills himself to have some courage in his voice. “I’m eating, Mag, what does it look like?”

“I’ve told you, I’ve told you time and time again, we can’t just have you eat whenever and whatever you want! I know you think you can just stuff your face whenever you get the tiniest bit peckish, Pete, but you  _ can’t _ . You need to have just- just the  _ slightest _ amount of self control. We have to save the food, we have to  _ ration _ it.”

Anger sparks inside Peter like gasoline thrown on a flame. “I haven’t eaten all day, Mag, it’s nearly sundown-”

“Oh, boo hoo, you can survive a day or two without food. You’re being selfish,  _ greedy.  _ As a fighter for freedom, as someone who needs to look out for the people, you need to look at the differences between the people you're trying to help, and the people you're trying to take down. What's the difference, again?" He's testing him, and Peter knows the answer. It's like it's burned into the back of his eyelids, and he sees it every time he closes his eyes, hears it even when Mag isn't there to say it. But he doesn’t say anything, he just glares. He refuses to play along.

"The people below have nothing because the people above have  _ everything _ . We can not become one of the people above. You know how they get there, Pete?" This time, Mag doesn't wait for an answer. "They become greedy. They take what they don't need, what they don't even want, and hoard it for themselves just because they can.”

"I'm hungry, so I took food **,** so that I could eat. That's how that works," Peter snaps, but feels his will to argue with Mag diminishing the longer he thinks about his words. 

“Don't get an attitude with me, boy," he says. “Those are supposed to be for the both of us, when  _ I  _ say we can have them. Clear?” Mag is angry, but mostly disappointed, like Peter had blown up their entire food supply instead of just sneaking a dumpling. When Peter doesn’t say anything, Mag shakes his head, turning away from him and back out where he came from. 

“You can have the rest of it. What do you care,” he grumbles, and leaves Peter alone in that tiny food closet, holding the dumpling. He’s never felt less hungry in his life.

\---

The next morning’s breakfast was... awkward. Buddy knew now, and Nureyev could feel it in the way she stared at him. Vespa knew, obviously, and she was also watching him like a hawk as she set his plate down in front of him. 

Nureyev had brushed right past Juno as he had left the sickbay last night, and he knew Vespa or Buddy wouldn’t have told him, but Juno’s not stupid. Juno was the smartest person he had ever met. So Juno definitely knew, and failed horribly at hiding it by casting worried glances at Nureyev when he thought he wasn't looking. 

And Jet and Rita keep sharing wide-eyed glances at each other whenever Nureyev so much as blinked, so yeah. The entire crew knew and Nureyev really wanted to jump out of a fucking airlock. 

Buddy was trying to keep the conversation light, but Nureyev was too tired to truly listen or tune in. Everyone dug in, eating the meal Vespa had prepared, but he couldn’t bring himself to even pretend to eat it. His fork hung slack in his hand and he just looked at the sauce on the vegetables and watched it drip and cool. The dull hum of people talking around him was like white noise, so when it suddenly stopped, he looked up to find everyone staring at him. 

“Pete,” Buddy said. “I asked what you thought of Vespa’s cooking.”

Oh. “I think it’s wonderful, thank you, Vespa.” Buddy narrowed her eyes but didn’t say anything. The rest of dinner was quiet, and Nureyev spent most of it pushing his food around before taking his leave. He didn’t bother to make up an excuse for his full plate. 

It was maybe five minutes later when Buddy knocked on his door. 

“Yes, yes, come in,” he called out, trying to make himself look busy and like he’d not just been staring at the wall. Buddy did just that, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. 

“You said you liked Vespa’s cooking,” she stated, standing with her hands on her hips before him. “But you hadn’t taken a single bite the entire meal.”

Nureyev forced himself to chuckle lightly. “I supposed I was just not very hungry, Captain, I apologize.”

“I’m not trying to corner you here, Ransom, we’re all just worried about you and your health, and we want to know how we can help,” Buddy said, and her rational, calm tone made him feel like a child again. He scoffed. 

“No, you’re not,” he said, his tone changing quickly as anything. He stood from his seat and Buddy, instead of tensing or reacting to the sudden movement, stood her ground, as solid as stone. “You’re not worried about me. You’re worried about your heists going wrong because of me. You don’t actually  _ care _ . If you’re going to stage a- an  _ intervention  _ or whatever it is that is happening right now, at least don’t lie about your intentions.”

Buddy shook her head. “Pete, I told you when you joined us that we were a family, and families care for each other, they look out for each other. Yes, I worry about how your actions affect the heists, but I’m mainly worried for your health above all.”

Nureyev leveled Buddy with a gaze so cold that a lesser woman would have been frozen in ice on the spot. “We may be a family,  _ Captain _ ,” he said, “but you are  _ not _ my mother.” 

\---

Nureyev buried himself underneath the blankets on his bed, staring at the dinky game on his comms that Rita had shown him a few weeks prior. It was dumb, some kind of block matching puzzle, but it kept his mind off of how he was probably getting kicked from the Carte Blanche crew, how hungry he was, how gross he felt inside and out, how disgusted Juno probably was with him. 

Juno. 

They hadn’t properly spoken since their little argument the other night, and Nureyev was pretty sure Juno hated him right now. With the way he’d been brushing Juno off, he wouldn’t blame him.

There was a knock at the door, interrupting Nureyev’s thought process. “Hey, uh, Ransom?” It was the lady himself. “It’s been a few hours since breakfast. And I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Nureyev pulled the sheets tighter around him. 

“I’m not- I’m not here to lecture you, I just don’t want you to be alone in all of this. Unless you  _ do _ want to be alone, then I’ll leave, but...”

He laid there and listened to Juno’s voice and desperately wanted him to come in, but couldn't bring himself to open the door. To face any consequences. 

“Fuck, can you just- can you knock twice to let me know you’re alive at least?” Juno’s voice sounded so strained that Nureyev mustered just barely enough strength to lift a fist and tap it against the headboard twice, loud enough for Juno outside to hear. 

He heard a sigh of relief, then, “Okay. I’m gonna leave, but uh. Find me if you need anything?” Juno waited a few moments for a response, and when he didn’t get one, Nureyev heard the (familiar) sounds of his soft footsteps going down the hallway. 

\---

Nureyev spent the rest of the day holed up in his room, doing the busywork Buddy had told him to do so that he didn’t have to think. When night fell, he had tried to just go back to sleep. He really did. He had done his nightly skincare routine with hands he pretended didn’t shake. He took out his essential oil diffuser that Juno always scrunched his nose at and filled his room with the scent of lavender. He laid in his bed and closed his eyes and tried to just breathe away the hunger. But his stomach growled and jumped, and the hunger had long surpassed annoying a day or so ago and had now simply become painful. 

So he was here, instead. Standing in the same kitchen he’d walked out of that morning. The lights were all off, and he was plunged in complete darkness, save for the twinkling of stars outside the window. The fridge in front of him taunted him, called his name, asked him if he was weak enough to open the door. 

He was. 

The inside of the fridge was meager; they were due for a supply run. It was mostly leftovers, some fruits, a bag of carrots, a few jars. He stared at his options, and even with every cell of his body begging him to indulge in something, anything, he still just... stared. Cooking was never his strong suit, so it would have to be something he could just eat straight from the container. The leftover cut of steak was high in protein, but covered in sauce, and even if he scraped most of it off, there’d still be those stray fats. 

He sat down, his legs weak and unsteady beneath him. The fruits were healthy, sure, but had loads of sugar. Same with the carrots. The jars were mostly sauces, condiments, and even if he was willing to eat those by themselves, they were much too unhealthy and would probably just make him sicker. 

Fuck. 

A tear slipped down his cheek and onto the tile floor next to him. He blinked, and realized he was  _ crying. _ He was sitting in front of a fridge, crying, at what must have been... 4am? A loud bark of laughter escaped him. He couldn’t help himself. It was pathetic, doing what he was doing. He continued chuckling to himself. He just needed to suck it up, to make a decision one way or another. It was like he was a scared 12 year old again. What was wrong with him?

What was wrong with him?

The chuckling turned to hitched breaths, and those quickly turned into sobs that wracked his shivering, thin frame. He curled in on himself, gripping a hand over his mouth in an attempt to muffle the sounds. It felt like they were being torn out of him, his poor lungs skipping over every other breath, making him more lightheaded than he already was. 

“Nureyev?”

He turned and there, of course, is Juno. His beautiful Juno, the Juno that probably hates him now. Nureyev opened his mouth to make a joke, or to ask if he woke Juno up, or to apologize. He hadn’t really decided yet. But all that made it out was another choked sob, and his trembling hand was clamped back over his mouth, and his eyes were squeezed shut so that he couldn’t see the pity in Juno’s eyes. Pull it together, he told himself. File it away, file it away.

He heard those soft footsteps again, but this time they were coming towards him. 

“Can I touch you?” 

Nureyev nodded so fast that his neck felt like it would snap in two, and Juno’s arms were instantly around him, warm, strong. He melted into the embrace like he wanted to drown in him. Juno’s hands ran up and down his back, and he was mumbling something in Nureyev’s ear, but he couldn’t make out any of the words. Just hearing his voice was enough, though.

Nureyev shuddered in his arms for god knows how long, clinging to Juno like a child. He was vaguely aware of one of Juno’s hands reaching up to close the fridge door at some point. When he’d calmed down enough to breathe normally, he sat up, wiping his eyes and,  _ ugh _ , his nose. He adjusted his glasses and ran his hand through his hair, trying in vain to look presentable. Juno let go of him to let him pull away, but one hand still remained on his knee, a reminder that he was here, that he wasn’t leaving. 

“Can we talk about it now?” Juno asked, half a joke and half deadly serious. Nureyev gave him a watery smile, putting his hand over Juno’s. 

“I suppose we can,” he said, his voice ragged and small. The smile slipped off of his face though, as he thought about actually telling Juno about... this. Every other person he’d ever tried to talk about this with shot him down, patronized him, told him to ‘just eat’, as if it were just that simple. (Not that he’d talked to an astronomical number of people about this problem of his.) But Juno... Juno was just sitting beside him, waiting, listening. And he knew that he would keep listening throughout. They both tended to talk a little too much, but they both also learned when to shut up and let the other speak. 

“When I was younger, when I was with Mag, food wasn’t exactly plentiful. I had learned to go days on end without eating, because we couldn’t afford anything else, and it was too risky at the time to steal food constantly, not with the Guardian Angel system in place. He always taught me that in order to be good at what I did, I needed to have self control, I needed to be selfless and think of others before I thought of myself. I guess keeping me from eating for days on end was his way of imparting that lesson. And after... after Mag...” Juno squeezed his hand, and Nureyev squeezed back. “After Mag,” he said again, “I quickly learned that your appearance is everything. How young you look, how pretty you look. The more physically appealing you were, the harder it was to raise suspicion, and the easier it was for the rich to loosen their grips on their jewels.” He smiled, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. 

“So I’m in the habit of not eating much at all these days,” he said. “Though I guess I let myself get lazy the past few months, careless with food in a way I’m normally vigilant about. I’m eight pounds over my ideal weight.” 

Juno looked like he wanted to say something about that very badly, but seemed to resist the urge, and instead said, “Are you going to get to the part where you explain why you’re crying in front of a fridge at 4 am?”

Nureyev ducked his head, interlocking their hands tighter. “I was hungry,” he mumbled.

“Do you... do you want me to cook you something?”

Nureyev chuckled again, despite himself, but Juno’s expression didn’t change. 

“Oh, you’re serious?”

“Yeah, I’m serious. I promise I won’t poison you or anything if that’s what you’re worried about, I’ve been told I’m a decent cook. Though I only really cook for Rita, and she eats abominations of god, so I guess she’s not that great of a judge of food, but Vespa’s eaten my food, so has Jet, but if you need a third opinion, I guess we could call Mick but he’s about as great a judge of what’s considered good food as Rita, I once saw the man peel roadkill off of the sidewalk and try to eat it, he claimed it was the same thing as jerky, we were 16 I think and Sasha had to-”

“Juno?”

“Hm?”

“I’d love that.”

“Oh. Okay. Cool.”

Juno squeezed Nureyev’s hand one last time before standing. “I’ll cook, you just sit and look pretty, yeah?”

“It’s what I’m best at.”

“You’re insufferable,” Juno said with a fond smile on his face, before turning his back to Nureyev and opening the fridge. He hummed, pulling ingredients out and piling them by the stove. And Nureyev did exactly as he was told, watching the beautiful lady do his work and wonder vaguely how he managed to get him to stay in his life. 

“You know,” Juno said, filling a pot with water under the sink, “I, uh. I used to do the same thing. Not eat.” He was very pointedly turned away from Nureyev. “We didn’t have a lot growing up, you know, and most of my food I had to steal. And when I got older, sometimes I was just too tired to eat, or didn’t feel like I deserved it, and I- I know it’s not exactly the same as what you’re going through, but I hope it’s... some comfort to know that I understand at least a little bit of it.” 

He was trying so hard to communicate, to be supportive, to be vulnerable, and it made Nureyev’s heart hurt. 

“Thank you for telling me,” he said, crossing his arms on the kitchen island and resting the side of his head there as Juno nodded, short and quick, and then put the pot of water on the stove. 

“Yeah, I- yeah. Sure. You too.” Juno took a package of noodles from a shelf above the stove and poured in about half of the contents inside, stirring it into the water. 

“I didn’t know you could cook,” Nureyev remarked. Juno’s movements were practiced and fluid, like he’d been through these same motions of this same meal about a million times. He drained the hot water into the sink, dodging the steam, and set the pot aside. 

“Oh, yeah, I kinda had to learn growing up. Mom wasn’t exactly a model parental figure.”

Nureyev chuckled at that. “Yes, I think I can relate to that.”

Juno laughed a little, too. They had to, or else it would hurt too much to think about. 

He pulled out another pot, this one shallower, and drizzled a little oil over it before putting it on over the heat. On a cutting board, Juno thinly sliced some peppers he’d found buried in the bottom of the fruit drawer, some pickled ginger leftover from their sushi night last week, a clove of garlic, and the baby carrots that Buddy had gotten Rita in a failed attempt to get her to eat some healthier snacks. He tossed the mixture in the pot, and it made a satisfying sizzling sound as it made contact, and an even more satisfying smell soon enough filled the kitchen.

“You eat meat, right?” Juno asked. Nureyev thought for a moment. Did he? Usually he avoided it at all costs; unless it was white meat, it was too high in calories, too fatty, too risky. But the way Juno looked at him, like Nureyev was something worth caring about, made him want to indulge a little. 

“Why not?” he replied. Juno seemed puzzled by the response, but still nodded, taking that leftover steak that Nureyev was agonizing over earlier, and scraped the sauce off with the flat of his knife into the sink before chopping that up too and throwing it into the pot as well. 

“Do you not know how to cook?” Juno asked. 

Nureyev scoffed. “God, no. I can burn water, I swear. One time, I was given a job to steal something from a rather wealthy woman living on Saturn. She was in need of a personal chef, and well, I was overly confident-”

“What?  _ You?” _

“Hush, Juno, I’m telling a story. As I was saying, she was in need of a personal chef so I drew up some fake documents and references and got myself hired. I, ah, may have set her house on fire.” 

Juno bursted out laughing, and it was like music to Nureyev’s ears. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Did you steal what you came there for?”

Nureyev grinned, the smug shithead he was. “Of course, the fire proved to be a great distraction.”

Juno took the pan of vegetables and meats and transferred them to a bowl, and then took the noodles from before and put those in the pan. He started adding soy sauce, more oil, just a bit of water, and-

“Peanut butter?” Nureyev asked, wrinkling his nose a little. Juno paused, holding the heaping spoonful of it over the pan. 

“What, you allergic to nuts?”   
  
“No, not at all, I just don’t understand what kind of meal you’re making here.”

“Have you never had peanut butter noodles?”   
  


“No?”

“Well, do you trust me?”

“Juno, of course I trust you, I trust you with my life, I just don’t know if-”

Juno dumped the peanut butter into the pan, ignoring Nureyev’s wince. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

“I’m still not sure if-”

“Listen, I’m not a private chef on Saturn, but I know what I’m doing.”

“If you insist!” Nureyev held his hands up in surrender. “I mean, it’s a good thing you’re not one. I heard they have a bad habit of setting houses on fire.”

Juno grinned, stirring the mixture in the pot. “Oh, a self burn. Fun!” Once he was satisfied with how his ungodly noodle and peanut butter mixture came out, he added the bowl of vegetables back to the mix, tossing the food with the skilled hand of a trained chef. He took down two more bowls and divided the noodles evenly between them, and grabbed two forks on his way over to Nureyev. Juno sat next to him at the kitchen island, sliding one bowl to Nureyev and holding out a fork to him. 

“Bon appetit,” he said, his tone casual. But the thing about Juno Steel was that he wore every single emotion on his face, so Nureyev could see the trepidation in his eyes, the anxiety. Nureyev took the fork from him, and hesitated. 

“You don’t have to eat all of it,” Juno said, and his voice grew soft in a way it only did when it was just the two of them. “Or any of it, really.”

Nureyev shook his head, gripping the fork firmly. “No. I will. I can.”

Juno reached across and squeezed his forearm, and took a bite of the food. “Okay, you better at least try to eat this. Because it’s pretty good, if I do say so myself,” he said through a mouthful of noodles. 

Nureyev took a deep breath. He deserved this, he tried to tell himself. And so he twirled the noodles around his fork, and took a bite. He chewed it, and if he weren’t determined to keep his shit together, he would have wept at all the rich flavors he was tasting, the texture of perfectly cooked food on his tongue.

“Oh wow,” he said as soon as he swallowed. “I’m sorry for doubting you, love, the peanut butter was a sound choice.”

Juno gave him a shit eating grin. “I told you. Now, this was a staple in the Steel household. The cheapest things you could get at the one grocery store in Oldtown were spaghetti noodles and peanut butter, so when little 10 year old Juno had to whip up something for me and Ben when Mom was AWOL, this was the go-to. I like to think I’ve perfected the recipe over the years.”

Nureyev took another bite, tentative, still unsure if he was allowed this. Of course, all of the intricate rules he’d made up for himself over the years said no, absolutely not. But in that moment, with Juno looking so happy that he was eating, he wasn’t sure he really gave a shit. “Maybe in another life, you would have been a professional chef.”

Juno snorted. “Maybe I would’ve gotten stabbed a few less times.”   
  


“I don’t know, kitchens have an awful lot of knives. Maybe you would’ve gotten stabbed more.”

Juno seemed relaxed now that Nureyev was eating, tilting his head and letting that easy, flickering smile remain on his face. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time the lunch lady in elementary school tried to kill me?”

“I don’t believe you did, but do enlighten me.”

Juno talked about the lunch lady who tried to slip poison into his mystery meat when he was nine, and Nureyev listened. And he continued eating. 

Fairy tales aren’t real, there’s no magical cure for mental illnesses or insecurities. And love wasn’t a cure for being sick, it never would be. He was eating now, and he’d probably eat tomorrow, but he would struggle in the future and this wouldn’t be the last week he spent ignoring the angry way his stomach growled at him. But, as Nureyev ate the meal that his love had made for him, as Juno let his head droop against Nureyev’s shoulder during his story, as he felt a sense of security and calm that had been foreign to him for years, Peter Nureyev believed that love could at least be a balm for his wounds while he tried to heal himself. And for now, that was enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> blease comment


End file.
